Workshop DendroGlobal (2)

DendroGlobal (2) - Exploiting dendrometer data at a global-scale in order to identify large-scale growth and drought stress tolerances

Birmensdorf, Switzerland: September 14-15, 2015

Organizer: Georg Von Arx (WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland)

The COST Action STReESS organized this workshop at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland on 14-15 September 2015. The COST participants David Frank, Kathy Steppe, Patrick Fonti, Roman Zweifel, Ana Stritih, Jordi Martinez-Vilalta, Rafael Poyatos, Henri Cuny (guest), Richard Peters (guest) and Georg von Arx met with the goal to (1) discuss and integrate the results from preliminary global dendrometer data analyses, (2) identify additional analyses towards the ultimate project goal of identifying large-scale growth and drought stress tolerances, and (3) produce an outline of a first scientific paper.A general DendroGlobal project update including data coverage and processing, data analysis, and preliminary results served as a basis to stimulate the exchange. Among the discussed topics were:

1. Identification of gaps in climate space and geographical coverage of currently received dendrometer data2. Data quality requirements depending on whether diurnal or seasonal metrics are considered3. Methodological questions related to extracting diurnal metrics and characterizing diurnal patterns4. Importance of different local sources of variation (dendrometer type, tree characteristics, etc.)5. Large-scale changes of diurnal dendrometer patterns across season, sites and species6. Use of diurnal metrics in seasonal and drought-period analyses

One of the pervasive elements in the discussions was the confirmation of the great potential of diurnal metrics for questions related to short-, but also longer-term tree responses to environmental variability. While the content of a white paper will circle around experiences made with data processing, quality control, extraction of diurnal metrics, diversity of patterns and local sources of variation, the participants also identified two distinct lines for ecologically oriented research papers. An update about these anticipated outputs will be presented at the COST Action STReESS meeting in Slovenia (November 2015).